A Century Of Heroes

It was a planner's dream: dams to harness central India's Narmada River. But Medha Patkar, a young, largely self-taught activist, was appalled by the price: huge amounts of land swamped, half a million villagers displaced and a lush river basin ruined. Leading hunger strikes, enduring beatings and vowing to drown herself in a flooded area, she got the World Bank to withdraw support of the key Sardar Sarovar dam and scared off investors from a second major dam. But the Indian government persists with the project, and Patkar fights on.

ROBERT HUNTER 1941- PAUL WATSON 1950-

When Bob Hunter, right, and Paul Watson joined buddies in Vancouver in 1971 to protest U.S. nuclear testing in the Arctic, they didn't realize they were setting off their own explosion. Calling themselves Greenpeace, the Canadians went on to stage demonstrations against sealing and whaling, all with media-savvy stunts, like hovering over a seal pup in front of a huge icebreaker. Even so, Watson quit Greenpeace as too timid and started the more radical Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose tactics include ramming whaling ships. Eventually Hunter quit as well, but the two left a big legacy: a wavemaking outfit ever ready for new battles, the latest against genetically modified foods--or, in Greenspeak, Frankenfoods.

MARTYRS

KEN SARO-WIWA 1941-1995

Kenule (Ken) Beeson Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian man of letters, a newspaper columnist, novelist, poet and author of the television show Basi and Company, about a young man always in and out of trouble. But in the '90s, he quit his TV career to lead a campaign against oil drilling that was devastating the lands of his Ogoni tribe. His crusade was derailed when his movement was implicated in the killing of four pro-government chiefs. Despite global protests and his pleas of innocence, he was hanged for murder. But he is not forgotten, as shown by the sign above, displayed outside a 1997 meeting of Commonwealth nations.

CHICO MENDES 1944-1988

Illiterate until age 18, he eked out a living as a rubber tapper, collecting latex from the Amazon's trees. Yet Chico Mendes became Brazil's environmental conscience. He not only organized his fellow tappers into a rural workers' union but also formed them into human barriers whenever chain saws and bulldozers threatened the rain forest that was their livelihood. Mendes' Gandhi-like tactics brought him global acclaim--and enemies. A week after celebrating his 44th birthday with his children and his wife Ilza, shown with his picture, he was cut down by ranchers' bullets.